Who Killed Jennifer Judd? - Ep.5: The Best Friend

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Sarah sits down with Trina, Misty's best friend who went to the fair with her the night she disappeared – the first time Trina has spoken publicly about the case in more than 30 years. In a deeply emotional conversation, Trina reveals crucial details about their friendship, Misty's home life, and what really happened the night of the fair. She addresses the conflicting accounts about their plans that evening, and why she initially lied to police about how she got home. As Trina opens up about the people in their lives, including disturbing revelations about the men who swirled around them as teenagers, one suspect starts to rise to the top of Sarah’s list. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Get ready for more of the gripping mysteries you love because Forensic Files is back and they're revisiting some of your favorite episodes. Come along as investigators, scientists, and experts, piece together evidence, clues, and data in search of the answers behind violent crimes, unexplainable mysteries, and other strange occurrences. Listen to Forensic Files on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Previously, on who took Misty Copsie? I mean, the problem with this is she could be anywhere, and you don't have anything. You have a bunch of weirdos, but you know, there's bottom feeders all over that area. Trina eventually made it home from school, called my mom. My mom asked her, where is my daughter? Do you know where my daughter is?

And she says, I don't know. I tried many times in many ways to reach Trina, and she did not want to do it. And I understand, because I think she feels enormous guilt and enormous sadness and probably unfairly blames herself for something someone else did. My mom would say from time to time, she knows more than what she's telling us. I know she knows more than what she's saying. From ID and ARC Media, I'm Sarah Kalin, and this is who took Misty Copsie. A few days into my trip to Washington, I'd finally reached Misty's best friend Trina,

the friend Misty went to the fair with the night she disappeared. Trina has not granted an interview to the media since right after Misty disappeared. But by some miracle, she's agreed to talk to me. We'll meet at her house after work, and I spend pretty much the entire day checking. the clock, watching the minutes tick by. I'm really worried that at any moment, Trina might call and back out. Every time my phone buzzes, I have a tiny heart attack. She's done so with reporters before, like Sean Robinson. As the last person known to be with Misty the night of her disappearance, Trina is such an important source of information, perhaps the most important

source of information, at least of people I have any shot of talking to on this trip. And as I drive up, I'm imagining all the different ways this conversation could go. Trina could stonewall me. She could be defensive. She could be evasive. She could just straight up not answer the door. Her account of what happened that night, as given to the police at the time, changed. What if she's still?

hiding something. I know that in 1992, she was hanging out with a 22-year-old man named Michael Reiner, a man with damning accusations against him, including a violent sexual attack on a different minor. Michael denied that accusation. Still, with everything I learn, Michael Reiner is inching higher and higher on my list of suspects. I have so many questions for Trina, and I'm honestly, not sure I'll get any of them answered. An hour and a half later, my producer and I pull up at Trina's house. The car that drove by us last time is parked in the driveway. At least she's home.

I walk up to the door and ring the bell. As soon as Trina opens the door, my nerves melt away. Trina opens the door with a warm smile. She's barefoot in a comfy, oversized sweater, with three friendly dogs at her feet. It's remarkable how much she looks just like the girl I've seen in those photos palling around with Misty more than 30 years ago.

The same curly dark hair down to her shoulders, now tinged with gray, and a distinctive, slightly mischievous glint in her eyes, though now behind glasses. I still don't know how candid she'll be, but her energy is not defensive. It's actually very inviting. Trina leads us into the carpeted living room, past a portrait wall of family photos.

The dogs continue to run circles around our feet, including a puppy, just a couple months old. As we start to settle in around the dining table, Trina tries to give the dog's bones to distract them. It's no use. No matter what she tries, the dogs insist on bringing the bones under the table and sitting directly at Trina's feet. So please pardon the occasional chewing and chomping noises in the background. While my producer sets up the mic, I start to tell Trina why I'm here. What I really want from Trina is one thing, the truth.

And the best way to get it is to make her feel at ease, lower any walls she may have built over many years of being questioned about this case. I tell her the same thing I said in my email. that I want to understand Misty. I want to actually get a chance to know Misty who feels like she's been a little lost

in the story of her own disappearance. Part of the case, like nobody even talks about her. You're going to make her cry. Because you're right. She was lost as a person. Because people are what happened. Yeah. Who else is involved?

Yeah. That kind of thing. But as a person, she's no longer there. What frustrates me about this is that these two ideas are not in opposition to one another. To understand what happened and who may have been involved, literally the solving of the crime, I must get to know Misty first. I know I say this a lot, but I can never overstate the importance here, the way the solution depends on knowing the person.

Misty deserves this. All victims deserve this as a way to bring them justice, and also as a way to recognize their humanity. So I start at the beginning. How did Trina and Misty first meet? I punched her. I think it was sixth grade because we were still in elementary

where we had recess. And we were playing tetherball, and the ball hit me. And she put her hand on my shoulder and asked if I was okay, and I got up and I punched her. And then I felt really bad. apologized the next day.

She lived in the same trailer park as I did, so I went to her house and apologized, and she had a whole bunch of friends over. Turns out it's Misty's 10th birthday. Misty doesn't hesitate. She accepts Trina's apology and asks Trina if she'd like to join the party. I think I ended up saying the night there that night.

Misty and Trina instantly become friends. They just hit it off right away. Trina starts spending a lot of time at Misty's. My home life was very abusive at the time. My mom was an alcoholic, and I didn't want to be at home a lot. I stayed at Misty's house all the time. I avoided my home as much as possible.

Misty's home in the Green Meadows Trailer Park community was a refuge for Trina. And when I asked Trina what she remembers about Misty's personality, I can see why. What pops is how bubbly she was. She got along with everybody, super friendly, kind, gentle soul, very into sports, basketball, baseball, loved it all, loved the horseback ride. You could always catch her in jeans and a t-shirt, just an all-around great person. She was one of kind, loved her mom, loved her dad, very equally, didn't talk bad about either one of them.

This catches my attention. I haven't heard much about Misty's dad, Paul Copsie, who went by Buck. But it sounds like he was a bigger feature of Misty's childhood than I realized. Honestly, that makes my heart happy, especially after all the police claimed about Misty having an unhappy home life. I did reach out to Buck, and he did not want to speak publicly about the case, which, of course, I will never push past. I remember going near her dad's house. They lived in the mountains, and so I liked going there. It was peaceful. It was quiet.

We could go play in the snow. We could ride in horses. We could do whatever we wanted. Most of the time we stayed in the house taking pictures of each other. We would dress up differently and take a picture, change our clothes, and put something else on and take a picture. I remember going through this same phase with my best friend at that age around the same time. I still have some of the pictures we took, dressed up in each other's clothes, posing like we thought we were hot shit.

It's funny how experiences like that are kind of universal. Trina also tells me they loved new kids on the block at that time. Those picks of me and my best friend, yeah, I still have them in a new kids' trapper keeper. You can take the girl out of the early 90s. Vanilla ice. Yeah, yeah. Ninety-two. Most of Trina's memories of Misty

include someone else, too. Misty's mom, Diana. Diana was very affectionate towards Misty. They had a great relationship, very loving and fun. She was a tentative mom that worked a lot and worked whenever she could. So a lot of times, we would be alone.

It would just be me And Misty, why her mom worked and her mom took on several jobs during that time. She wore a lot of makeup, a lot of makeup, and it would take her two hours to get ready and put her face together and do her hair. I remember her sitting in the living room with as much natural light in the mirror and putting on her face all the time. Trina says she was spending so much time there. she even started calling Diana mom. I called her mom because she was mom. This is exactly the kind of information I mean

when I talk about really getting to know a victim and the details of her everyday life. In Misty's case, I see more and more pointing to a stable, secure home life that would be very unlikely to drive a kid to run away. Running away, which does happen, to be clear, is about escaping. It's about the lesser of two evils.

Diana sounds like she was a busy working mom a lot of the time, but it also appears that she was doing her best as a mom, and the home life for Misty was good. Unlike, for instance, Trina, who says she didn't really have a mother figure, and in fact turned to Diana to fill that hole. As Diana stepped into that parental role for Trina, that meant, at times, Diana had to lay down the law.

She was also strict to the rules. Definitely, if we were out of line, we knew it, and she would call it out. Not an abusive mom, but if you were in trouble, you know it. And so we just didn't get in trouble as much as possible. Missy's brother, Colton, told me once that Diana, was soft and loving, but that she could be a gangster, too. She had that side of her.

It was best not to mess with Diana Smith. In the spring of 1992, Misty and Diana moved out of Green Meadows. Green Meadows was at the bottom of a hill, and they moved to the top of the hill into a duplex at that time. This is the duplex in Spanaway, where Misty and Diana are living in September of 1992.

Even with more distance between them, Misty and Trina remain attached at the hip. Trina remembers meeting up to go to a grocery store nearby. We would go get donuts and eat the whole entire dozen. Not long after Misty's move, Trina moved two to a town called Sumner in the opposite direction. My mom woke me up one morning and said, put everything in your suitcase. You're leaving and dropped me off. To me at the time,

it was a random lady. I had no idea who she was. This random lady was Trina's new guardian, a woman named Marlene. The more I learn about Trina, both how hard her teen years were and how grounded and open she is now at 48 years old, the more empathy I have for what this entire ordeal must have been like for her. What it's still like, actually. It's clear that it's all very fresh and the pain of it is still right at the surface for her. In online discussions,

I've seen people question if Trina knew more than she's let on. She's been vilified. I feel terrible about that and even worse about having bought into it to some degree myself. So this is the backdrop. On September 17, 1992, when Misty and Trina decide to go to the Puyallup Fair. That afternoon, Diana and Misty come to pick up Trina.

She changed in the car from her school clothes to play clothes, and then her mom dropped us off. The day was a great day. We were together. We were having fun. I can't remember what we did first, but we rode rides. I remember one particular ride that we were in a, bucket seat and it was in a cage and it went around but you spun as it was going around and I was

absolutely terrified but she was laughing the whole time like I could still see her rocking back and forth making the car spin. Trina's been smiling as she talks about their afternoon at the fair then she stops and wipes her eyes. I miss her and I know she's not there but but I don't ever want to rehash the feeling of being with her at the very last time and not knowing it was going to be the last. We're now getting into the hardest part of my job. I'm okay with crime scenes. I'm okay with diving into the minds of the most horrible people in the world.

But asking someone to open up their own wounds to get deep into the details of the worst thing that ever happened to them, this feels like an invasion. I know it's critical to ultimately helping them have some answers and maybe even some peace, but it always feels ghoulish, and I feel enormous guilt over it. Here, what I have to figure out is if there's something Trina's not revealing,

not necessarily out of malice, not because she was involved. I do not believe that at all. But maybe out of guilt or fear, or even a detail in her memory she didn't realize was potentially important. I asked her to walk me through the night from the moment she and Misty realize it's time to leave the fair.

It was probably 7.38 o'clock, and I remember it getting dark. We had school the next day, and we went to the main gate where there was a bank of pay phones, and then we decided we'd go and call our rides. Call our rides. I need her to clarify.

This seems to line up with what she told police, as in that she and Misty called Rubin and Michael before calling Diana to say that they'd missed the bus. I've never been sure which version to trust. There's Diana's version in which Misty said she'd take an 8.40 p.m. bus. And there's Trina's version in which they call Rubin, and when he says no, they call Michael. My producer, Tessa, reads my mind.

I thought the plan originally was that Misty would get the bus home, and then she missed the bus. No, the original plan was our friend would pick us up that drove, and that was Ruben. Okay, now we're getting somewhere. Get ready. for more of the gripping mysteries you love because forensic files is back and they're revisiting some of your favorite episodes come along as investigators scientists and experts piece together evidence clues and data in search of the answers behind violent crimes unexplainable mysteries and other strange occurrences listen to forensic files on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you get your

podcasts. It's not news to me that the night of the fair, Misty called Rubin Schmidt for a ride. Diana told reporter Sean Robinson that when Misty called her around 8.45 p.m. saying she had missed the bus, Misty suggested she could try calling Rubin for a ride. Diana said she explicitly told Misty to try to find someone else, knowing that Misty was fully aware of the fact that Diana did not approve of Rubin hanging around her daughter. When Diana gets home from work the next morning and Misty isn't there, she immediately turns to Ruben for answers. Rubin also admits that, yes, Misty called him, but he says he didn't have the

gas to go pick her up. Trina's story is different in a significant way. Trina is, saying there was never a plan to take a bus. Misty's plan all along was to call her friend Ruben Schmidt and that Ruben had previously agreed to give Misty and Trina a ride home. I asked Trina to help me understand something. Is there a chance that she was not up front with Diana about that? Because what Diana has said was that Misty had shown her, like, I've done the research, I can take the bus,

I know it's this route, and I will take the bus home. I don't remember any of that, mostly because we don't have bus routes at the fingertips like we do now. How would she know what bus to take? I don't remember us saying we're going to ride the bus. For Misty and I, we knew we were going to call Rubin the entire time. The bus route point is a good one, but there were ways to get the information. A person just had to work a little harder for it than we do. today. But it's also possible that this was a fib, Misty told Diana to get permission to go to the

fair. Even the most well-behaved kids do this. All of us told little fibs here and there to get our way. I try to push on this a little further to clear up whether or not Diana knew the plan was always to call Rubin, or if Misty and Trina weren't exactly honest with Diana about their plans. plus years later, she's just not sure. Either way, she remembers that when they call Rubin, he bails on them. Rubin said he didn't have enough gas, didn't have enough money. I had money I could give him.

He could have that for gas as long as he could come down and pick us up. No, couldn't do it. Rubin's out. So Trina suggests someone else, Michael Reiner. Why don't we call him? And at that point, it was a pager, so I paged him. And then on the pay phones, there was always a number that you could have people call you back on. So I paged him with that number to call me back.

For those who skew a little younger in age, Trina has done a pretty straightforward job of explaining it. There was often a little strip of paper under clear plastic with the number of that particular payphone just above the number pad, so that someone could have people call back because calls from pay phones were more expensive than from a house phone. Obviously, this worked for paging people, too, when we got into the beeper era. I don't remember if Mike actually answered

or said he couldn't make it or what happened. I know that we called Ruben back, told him how to break into Misty's house to get money, and then we could give him whatever else we had to get wherever he needed to go. Let me take a second here to explain the general geography of the area we're talking about.

The friend's house where Rubin is staying and the duplex where Misty and Diana live are about three miles from each other in Spanaway. Spanaway is just over 10 miles southwest of the fairgrounds in Pua. So it's plausible that Rubin didn't have enough gas or money to get gas to drive those 10 miles to Puyala. But he might have been able to drive three miles to Misty's house to get some money out of her

piggy bank. And I can see how a couple 14 and 15-year-old kids might think this is a positively genius idea. As I've said before, teenagers will go so far not to get in trouble with their parents, that they'll sometimes actually get themselves into even more danger. Especially with a mom like Diana, who Trina tells us was no nonsense, we didn't get in trouble. So, yeah, I believe that even a well-behaved kid like Misty would have told Rubin how to get money from her piggy bank. But their pleas are unsuccessful at that point still. Still, the answer was no.

This, Trina says, is when they finally called Diana. They're stuck, stranded, their plans have fallen through. They need help. I don't remember the conversation that we had with her mom. I just remember her mom being very angry and figure it out. Finally, at some point, we leave the fair and we walk a couple blocks down the street to where there is a bus depot. I had $10 and I gave her the money that I had and we talked about her getting on the bus

and I would walk home. Trina's Guardian's house isn't exactly around the corner. It's just over three miles away on foot. But it was definitely shorter than Puyall just man away. So Trina gives Misty the $10 in her pocket and they part ways. I remember giving me

her the money and saying our goodbyes and leaving her at the bus stop is the last time I saw her. I asked Trina how she was feeling in that moment. Was she panicked, scared? No, no. I thought we should get the bus. I'd walk home. I wouldn't get in trouble for lying to my guardian at the time. Even leading up to the very end, it wasn't a scary thing. We were upset that our friend bailed on us and was not picking us up. But at that time, no. I definitely thought she was going to get on the bus and we'd talk the next day.

This story makes a lot of sense. I don't get the feeling that Trina's being evasive or hiding something or struggling to come up with answers to my questions. But one thing isn't adding up. In Trina's second statement to the police, she said she walked part of the way and then Michael Reiner did come pick her up. I asked Trina about this and she explains.

Michael did call her at the payphone when she paged but he also said, no, I can't come get you. About a mile into her walk, Michael finds her on her route and picks her up for the last two miles or so of the journey. He saw me and pulled into the parking lot And then I realized it was his car. And obviously I walked into the parking lot and got into his car with him.

And he was going to drive me the rest of the way home. We stopped at the river. We had intercourse in the car. He drove me home. We talked for a couple minutes, and I got out of the car and then went into the house, and he drove away. Like the payful,

stuff, this might sound a little ridiculous for our younger listeners. She pages him. He says he can't come, but then he just starts driving and hopes he'll find her. This is another one of those things that might sound like it's tough to make sense of. But in the pre-cellphone era, we often picked meeting points and had to, you know, actually stick to our plans in order to meet up with people. Sometimes we did have to drive around looking for a friend we were meeting. It doesn't strike me as far-fetched that Michael would have changed his mind and then started driving the route Trina would likely walk home and try to find her. My producer chimes in to clarify something.

So another thing, and again, I'm like trying to clear up some stuff that feels like perhaps it's been a game of telephoned around is that Michael was coming to pick you up and Misty said, like, I don't want to get a ride with him. Yeah, she hated him. He got my virginity. She did not like him at all. He was older. She did not like him because of my relationship with him.

But he never put the moves on Misty or anything like that. Oh, no. She was protective of me. She didn't like him because of me. And to her, he wasn't good looking. Long hair, smoker, you know, no way. she wouldn't smoke, she wouldn't do drugs, she wouldn't have adult relations. To her, he was a creep because he took my virginity and we were still having relations,

not because of what comes to light of the history that I had no idea about. Ah, yes, Michael's history, that previous accusation of a sexual assault of a minor. Again, he was a juvenile when it reportedly happened and he denied it happened. But it was allegedly a violent sexual assault of a younger girl, one that started when he tried to get her into his car. I understood his, I guess he had a pedophile.

He wanted to conquer virgins. I knew that I was one of several women that he was with in a day. I knew that. And I was okay with that. Well, in my mind, I have no idea. But we talked about it. We were openly talking about things like that.

It was him that wanted to, how many times could he have sex in a day with how many women? But I didn't know about the other minor. I didn't know he got in trouble for that. Trina was 15 years old. This was being groomed. Michael was taking advantage of a girl who was destabilized, living in an abusive home.

This really is textbook stuff. He was supplying my cigarettes. He was supplying attention. He would take me out to coffee, which was away from my house. And he was given me the attention that I was not getting at home. This explains why Trina lied to the police,

why at first she told them she walked all the way home, no mention of Michael picking her up. Knowing all this context, it makes perfect sense why. I was protecting Michael. I didn't tell them about our sexual encounters. I didn't tell them that we went to the river and had intercourse. He was older.

I was under the age. I was protecting him. I didn't want him to get in trouble. And that's why I lied. I don't think I was wrong to have questions about her account when I was getting it third hand from media portrayals of information taken from police reports. But now, face to face, my reservations have completely melted away.

All the questions were little puzzle pieces I have been missing. But now they've all dropped into. into place and the picture is clear, Trina is telling me the truth. I'm confident of that. So now with all this and knowing why Misty disliked Michael Reiner out of a sense of protecting her friend, not because he had behaved inappropriately towards her personally, it also clarifies the picture around him. He wanted to conquer virgins.

gross. A devout girl like Misty would be right up his alley. Is it impossible? He dropped Trina off by her 10 p.m. curfew and then went back for Misty? No. But he told police he went home after dropping Trina off. Does that mean I can completely rule him out? No. Personally, I think it's a bit far-fetched to think he might have gone looking for Misty. Misty could have been anywhere by then, and it sounds like she hated him. No way she'd call him back again for a ride. She probably didn't even have his number. But these are not definitive reasons to rule him out.

These are my personal opinions. If I hear of any other reasons to pursue Michael, I will. But right now, from what I've learned about Michael, I'm growing increasingly suspicious of someone else. Someone whose number she did have. Someone she did call. Ruben Schmidt. It's finally time to get to it.

What does Trina know about Ruben? On Friday, September 18th, Trina goes to school like usual. are in different schools at this point, so to her knowledge, nothing is awry. I went to school the next day, came home. The answer machine was blinking, played the message, and it was Diana freaking out. Where's her baby girl?

Where is Misty? And it was several messages. Cursing and screaming and freaking out on the phone. I immediately called her house. and realized that she never made it home. I asked what was going through her mind. Probably what's going through my mind right now. How?

Why? What happened? She was so sweet and so young. What happened to her? These are the thoughts of a great. own woman. At the time, Trina wasn't thinking about Misty as young and vulnerable. She was clinging to hope. She'll call me as soon as she gets home. I never got that call. This is all Trina knows for months. Her best friend has disappeared. Her friend's mom is freaking

out. The police aren't looking for her. No evidence has been found, no suspects interrogated. Misty is just gone. Life continues, and so I had to continue going to school and kind of get updates from her mom if her mom would call me and let me know. Five months later, the genes are found. The police finally begin to actually investigate the case as anything more than a runaway. Finally, for the very first time in an investigative capacity,

the police talked to Trina, the last person known to be with Misty that night. I do recall them bringing pictures of her clothing. The jeans, the sock, the rolled-up pants, those were exactly what was she he was wearing. Those were the jeans and those were the socks. I remember seeing the jeans and knowing exactly that that's what I knew it was hers

I knew they were not on her anymore and something happened to her because they're not on her and they were dirty and they were in the ditch and somebody threw them away like they threw her away Trina still can't believe the original investigators didn't talk to her for so long

I don't think they cared. I don't think they cared at all. Being the last person this year, why wouldn't you want more information from me? Trina did not make any attempt to contact the police herself. Again, she was 15 years old. If the police had bothered to speak to her sooner, Trina could have told them that their whole runaway theory

was absolutely ridiculous from day one. Her mom and her had a really good relationship. There would be no way she would run away. There would be no way. And if she ran away, she would run away to her dad's. They had a relationship. It wasn't a bad relationship anywhere around. Police contacted Misty's dad.

She never came to his house, as far as anyone knows. He didn't exactly live close. I don't have an address for him at the time, but Trina says he lived, quote, up in the mountains. And not to tell me about it? No, absolutely not. There was no reason to run away. She wasn't being abused.

She wasn't being harassed. She loved school. She loved the sports that she played in. She loved her mom. They had a great relationship. They were best friends. They were really close. She didn't run away.

Something happened to her. I ask how what happened to Misty and the police mishandling affected Diana. Trina starts to cry. After a long silence, she responds. She turned to the bottle and I don't blame her, but she was drinking before it happened. But she called me so many times drunk

and yelled at me that I knew something, I did something. Trina looks devastated as she says, says this. She tells me this went on for years that Misty's mom would call her at all hours of the night demanding answers, answers that Trina didn't have. And I finally just had to, I had enough. My mom was abusive. I didn't need her being abusive, and I don't blame her. I was just as innocent. Trina cut ties with Diana, and they never got back in touch. It was a loss Trina felt profoundly.

She's long wondered how Diana's drinking impacted the way police handled this case. She called me a million times, yelling at me. She probably called the police a million times and lost the respect. But again, like, she's trying to find her answers. They didn't do their due diligence and didn't come. treat the case like they should have. And then to find out that she passed away. It's horrible.

No, that she went to her own grave, not knowing. She hit that bottle hard. And the answer's not at the bottom. There's no other word to describe all this, but intense. This is the first time the tragedy. of this story really cuts me deep. Tragedy that radiated out of this incident impacting Diana but also Trina.

The fact of the matter is that if the police had jumped into action the moment Diana reported Misty missing, even if it was too late to find her alive, maybe they could have gotten answers, resolutions for Diana, and she wouldn't have taken her anger and uncertainty out on Trina. The ripple effects of Misty's life, Loss might not have spread so far.

Maybe Diana did have a drinking problem, and it really appears to have impacted the way the police treated her. But again, that is absolutely no excuse for the investigator's actions and police letting critical evidence and suspects slip through their fingers, including a person who clearly should have been on their radar from day one. Ruben Schmidt. My conversation with Trina has led me to feel pretty sure Michael Reiner did not do this. And it's led me to feel more certain that I want to ask Trina more about Ruben Schmidt.

I asked how Trina and Misty even met 18-year-old Rubin. Through a mutual friend, Didi Miles, Didi hung out with Rubin a lot. We always hang out on Didi's front porch. We would sleep out there. We would make ice cream out there. We hung out on the front porch in tents, and he had a car. I didn't care for the guy, but that's because I was interested in somebody else. I honestly didn't know that Ruben and Misty had a relationship further than acquaintances, more than a friendship.

Just to be super clear, I ask if there was anything romantic going on. Trina scoffs at that idea. No, she's so innocent. What the chastity about? She wasn't going to give up anything until she got married. I gave up mine early, and she got so mad. Oh, she was mad. She went to church.

She was a good girl. She was not going to partake in that, not even a kiss or anything. Were you under the impression, though, that Rubin liked her? I think Ruben liked anything that walked, anything that was under 18. I reached out to Rubin to verify this. He did not respond. This was something Diana obviously clocked in him and made her dislike him immensely.

I'm sure her dislike and distrust was only made worse when she reportedly overheard him telling Misty that he got horny just looking at her. Apparently, Misty wasn't the only one on the receiving end of Rubin's problematic attention. Trina lists three other teen girls by name. I'm withholding their names for privacy. I don't think they were as a hookup, but he definitely hung out with them. It's a different world back then, and you can see it now, but back then you couldn't see the grooming.

he ended up raping after Misty disappeared. Sean Robinson reported on this accusation, noting that Trina's friend filed an incident report in early 1996. She was 18 years old. Two weeks later, she backed out of pursuing an investigation, and, as is the case far more often than not, ultimately did not pursue charges. She told law enforcement that she was undergoing counseling relating to rape.

I know he raped her, she told me. I don't know about the case of Rubin being pressed charges. I do know that he raped. Yeah. I asked Trina if I can contact this friend. This is a significant allegation, and I'd like to substantiate Trina's memory. Trina tells me that she passed away. so I can't confirm anything with her.

But if the friend told Trina this, I'm inclined to believe it happened. Knowing all of this goes a long way towards cementing Ruben Schmidt into a viable suspect. Rubin was eliminated as a suspect by original investigators, and even in more recent investigations by Puyallup PD, still no charges have been brought against him. If such an obvious suspect is never charged after all this time,

the police must have a reason, right? I think it's time to lay out everything we know. We'll start that deep dive next time. Coming up on who took Misty Copsie. To me, there's no one who was floated as a suspect that we could absolutely rule out. Even Ruben Schmidt, I wouldn't say absolutely not. He's not a suspect. Nobody knows for sure whether Ruben comes and picks her up.

Did he give her a ride? We do not know. Did he tell the cops, I drove up to an area that is not that far from where these genes were discovered? Yes, he did. She mentioned it to me about, you know, Rubin was the one who had something to do with that girl that was missing. And I was like, what girl that was missing? Who Took Misty Copsie is produced by Arc Media for ID. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts.

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